The Liar (12 page)

Adrian looked across at Pigs Trotter who was rocking forwards and tightly gripping his handkerchief as if it were the safety-bar of a roller-coaster.

‘It’s a misquotation from
The Lost Weekend
that bit, I think,’ said Adrian. ‘Ray Milland talking about alcohol. So. You … er … you’re in love then?’

Trotter nodded.

‘Um … anyone … anyone I’d know? You don’t have to say if you don’t want to.’ Adrian was maddened by the huskiness in his throat.

Trotter nodded again.

‘It … must be pretty tough.’

‘I don’t mind telling you who it is,’ said Trotter.

I’ll kill him if it’s Cartwright, Adrian thought to himself. I’ll kill the fat bastard.

‘Who is it then?’ he asked, as lightly as he could.

Trotter stared at him.

‘You of course,’ he said and burst into tears.

They walked slowly back towards the House. Adrian wanted desperately to run away and leave Pigs Trotter to welter in the salt bath of his fatuous misery, but he couldn’t.

He didn’t know how to react. He didn’t know the form. He supposed that he owed Trotter something. The object of love should feel honoured or flattered, responsible in some way. Instead he felt insulted, degraded and revolted. More than that, he felt put upon.

Trotter?

Pigs can fly. This one could, anyway.

It isn’t the same, he kept saying to himself. It isn’t the same as me and Cartwright. It can’t be. Jesus, if I were to declare my love to Cartwright and he felt a tenth as pissed off as I do now …

‘It’s all right, you know,’ said Pigs Trotter, ‘I know you don’t feel the same way about me.’

Feel the same way about me?
Christ.

‘Well,’ said Adrian, ‘the thing is, you know, I mean it’s a phase, isn’t it?’

How could he say that? How could he
say
that?

‘It doesn’t make it any better though,’ said Trotter.

‘Right,’ said Adrian.

‘Don’t worry. I won’t bother you. I won’t tag onto you and Tom any more. I’m sure it’ll be all right.’

Well there you are. If he could be so sure that it would be ‘all right’ then how could it be love? Adrian knew that it would never be ‘all right’ with him and Cartwright.

Trotter’s wasn’t the Real Thing, it was just Pepsi.

They were nearing the House. Pigs Trotter dried his eyes on the sleeve of his blazer.

‘I’m very sorry,’ said Adrian, ‘I wish …’

‘That’s okay, Healey,’ said Trotter. ‘But I ought to tell you that I have read
The Scarlet Pimpernel
, you know.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, in the book, everyone wanted to know who the Scarlet Pimpernel was and so Percy Blakeney made up that rhyme: the one you just did a version of: “They seek him here, they seek him there, Those Frenchies seek him everywhere …”’

‘Yes?’ What on earth was he on about?

‘The thing is,’ said Trotter, ‘that it was Percy Blakeney himself who was the Scarlet Pimpernel all the time, wasn’t it? The one who made up the rhyme. That’s all.’

IV

Adrian managed to get into Chapel early next morning, so that he could sit behind Cartwright and ponder the beauty of the back of his head, the set of his shoulders and the perfection of his buttocks as they tightened when he leant forward to pray.

It was a strange thing about beauty, the way that it transformed everything in and around a person. Cartwright’s blazer was outstandingly the most beautiful blazer in Chapel, but it came from Gorringe’s like everyone else’s. The backs of his ears, peeping through the soft golden tangle of his hair, were skin and capillary and fleshy tissue like any ears, but nobody else’s ears set fire to Adrian’s blood and flooded his stomach with hot lead.

The hymn was ‘Jerusalem the Golden’. Adrian as usual fitted his own words.

‘O Cartwright you are golden, With milk and honey blest. Beneath thy contemplation Sink heart and voice opprest. I know well, O I know well, What lovely joys are there, What radiancy of glory, What light beyond compare.’

Tom, next to him, heard and gave a nudge. Adrian obediently returned to the text, but lapsed again into his own version for the final verse.

‘O sweet and blessed Cartwright, Shall I ever see thy face? O sweet and blessed Cartwright, Shall I ever win thy grace? Exult O golden Cartwright! The Lord shall play my part: Mine only, mine for ever, Thou shall be, and thou art.’

Six hundred hymn-books were shelved and six hundred bodies rustled down onto their seats. At the east end, Headman’s heels rang out on the stone floor as he stepped forward for Notices, hitching up the shoulder of his gown.

‘Boys have been seen using a short cut from the Upper to Alperton Road. You are cordially reminded that this path goes through Brandiston Field, which is private property and out of bounds. The sermon on Sunday will be given by Rex Anderson, Suffragan Bishop of Kampala. The Bateman Medal for Greek Prose has been won by W. E. St. J. Hooper, Rosengard’s House. That is all.’

He turned as if to go, then checked himself and turned back.

‘Oh, there is one more thing. It has come to my notice that a more than usually juvenile magazine of some description has been circulating about the school. Until the authors of this nonsense have come forward there will be no exeats, no club activities and all boys will be confined to their Houses in free time. Nothing else.’

‘It’s a fucking outrage,’ said Adrian as they streamed out of the Chapel into the sunshine. ‘And so pathetic, so completely pathetic. “A juvenile magazine of some description!” As if he hasn’t read it a hundred times and trembled with fury as he read it!’

‘He just wants to make it sound as if it isn’t such a big deal,’ said Tom.

‘Does he really think we’re going to fall for that? He’s scared, he’s bloody scared.’

Heydon-Bayley came up.

‘Gated for the rest of term! The bastard!’

‘It’s just a feeble attempt to try and get the school to turn against the magazine and do his detective work for him,’ said Bullock. ‘It won’t work. Whoever’s responsible is too clever.’

*

Adrian was once more at a loose end that afternoon. It was a Corps day so there was no cricket and he didn’t dare climb up to Gladys Winkworth in case he bumped into Trotter again. Officially he should be visiting his old lady and doing odd jobs for her, but she had died of hypothermia the previous term and he hadn’t been supplied with a replacement yet. He had just decided to go down to the School Gramophone Library and practise conducting to records, a favourite legal pastime, when he remembered he had a standing invitation to tea from Biffen the French master.

Biffen lived in rather a grand house in its own grounds on the edge of town.

‘Hello, sir,’ said Adrian. ‘It’s a Friday, so I thought …’

‘Healey! How splendid. Come in, come in.’

‘I’ve brought some lemon curd, sir.’

There were about six boys already in the sitting room, talking to Biffen’s wife, Lady Helen. Biffen had married her at Cambridge and then taken her back to his old school when he joined as a junior master. They had been here ever since, objects of great pity to the school: an Earl’s daughter tied to a no-hope, slow-lane pedagogue.

‘I know you!’ boomed Lady Helen from the sofa. ‘You are Healey from Tickford’s House. You were Mosca in the School Play.’

‘Healey is in my Lower Sixth French set,’ said Biffen.

‘And he mobs you appallingly, Humphrey dear. I know.’

‘Er, I’ve brought some lemon curd,’ said Adrian.

‘How kind. Now, who do you know here?’

Adrian looked round the room.

‘Um …’

‘You’ll certainly know Hugo. He’s in your House. Go and sit next to him, and get him to stop spoiling my dog.’

Adrian hadn’t noticed Cartwright sitting at a window seat, apart from the main group, tossing bits of cake at a spaniel.

‘Hi,’ he said, sitting down next to him.

‘Hi,’ said Cartwright.

‘Did you pass your exam then?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Your Grade Three piano. You remember. Last term.’

‘Oh, that. Yes thanks.’

‘Great.’

More immortal dialogue from the Noël Coward of the seventies.

‘So,’ said Adrian, ‘do you come here … er … is this something you’ve been to many times?’

‘Most Fridays,’ said Cartwright. ‘I’ve never seen you here before.’

‘No, well … I’ve not been invited before.’

‘Right.’

‘So … er … what happens exactly?’

‘Well, you know, it’s just a tea-party, really.’

And so it had proved. Biffen had instigated a book game in which everyone had to own up to books they’d never read. Biffen and Lady Helen called out titles of classic novels and plays and if you hadn’t read them you had to put your hand up.
Pride and Prejudice, David Copperfield, Animal Farm, Madame Bovary, 1984, Lucky Jim, Sons and Lovers, Othello, Oliver Twist, Decline and Fall, Howards End, Hamlet, Anna Karenina, Tess of the D’Urbervilles
, the list of unread books that they managed to compile had made them all giggle. They had agreed that by the end of term the list would have to be much more obscure. The only two books that had been read by everyone present were
Lord of the Flies
and
Catch 22
which, Biffen remarked, said much about English teaching at prep schools. It was all a transparent, and to Adrian rather wet, device to get everyone to read more, but it worked.

Adrian, despite the gentility of it all, had rather enjoyed himself and was fired with an enthusiasm for outreading everyone on the Russians, who always sounded the most impressive and impenetrable.

‘I mean,’ he said to Cartwright as they walked back to Tickford’s, ‘this place can really get you down. It’s not a bad idea to have a sanctuary like that to go to, is it?’

‘He’s going to be my tutor next year when I’m in the Sixth Form,’ said Cartwright. ‘I want to go to Cambridge and he’s the best at getting you through Oxbridge Entrance apparently.’

‘Really?
I
want to go to Cambridge too!’ said Adrian. ‘Which college?’

‘Trinity, I think.’

‘God, me too! My father was there!’

Adrian’s father in fact had been to Oxford.

‘But Biffo thinks I should apply to St Matthew’s. He has a friend there he was in the war with, a Professor Trefusis, supposed to be very good. Anyway, we’d better get a move on. Don’t forget we’re gated. It’s nearly five already.’

‘Oh shit,’ said Adrian, as they broke into a run.

‘Did you read the magazine, then?’ he asked as they jogged up the hill to Tickford’s.

‘Yes,’ said Cartwright.

And that was that.

‘It was practically a conversation, Tom!’

‘Great,’ said Tom. ‘Thing is …’

‘It’s all settled. He’ll join me at Cambridge in my second year. After we’ve graduated we’ll fly to Los Angeles or Amsterdam to get married – you can there, you know. Then we’ll set up house in the country. I’ll write poetry, Hugo will play the piano and look beautiful. We’ll have two cats called Spasm and Clitoris. And a spaniel. Hugo likes spaniels. A spaniel called Biffen.’

Tom was unimpressed.

‘Sargent was in here ten minutes ago,’ he said.

‘Oh pissly piss. What was he after?’

‘Tickford wants to see you in his study straight away.’

‘What for?’

‘Dunno.’

‘It can’t be … does he want to see you as well? Or Sammy or Bollocks?’

Tom shook his head.

‘He’s got nothing on me,’ said Adrian. ‘He can’t have.’

‘Stout denial,’ said Tom. ‘It works every time.’

‘Exactly. Brazen it out.’

‘But I tell you,’ warned Tom, ‘there’s definitely something up. Sargent looked scared.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Adrian, ‘he hasn’t the imagination.’

‘Shit-scared,’ said Tom.

The Housemaster’s study was through the Hall. Adrian was surprised to see all the prefects standing about in a cluster near the door that connected the boys’ side of the House to Mr and Mrs Tickford’s living quarters. They stared at him as he went through. They didn’t jeer or look hostile. They looked … they looked shit-scared.

Adrian knocked on Tickford’s door.

‘Come in!’

Adrian swallowed nervously and entered.

Tickford was sitting behind his desk, fiddling with a letter-opener.

Like a psychopath toying with a dagger, thought Adrian.

The window was at Tickford’s back, darkening his face too much for Adrian to be able to read his expression.

‘Adrian, thank you for coming to see me,’ he said. ‘Sit down, please sit down.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Oh dear … oh dear.’

‘Sir?’

‘I don’t suppose you have any idea why I have sent for you?’

Adrian shook his head, a picture of round-eyed innocence.

‘No, I should imagine not. No. I hope word has not got out.’

Tickford took off his glasses and breathed anxiously on the lenses.

‘I have to ask you now, Adrian … oh dear … it’s all very …’

He replaced the glasses and stood up. Adrian could see his face clearly now, but still he couldn’t read it.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘I’m going to have to ask you about your relationship with Paul Trotter.’

So
that
was it!

The moron had gone and blabbed to someone. The Chaplain probably. And vicious Dr Meddlar would have been only too keen to repeat it to Tickford.

‘I don’t know what you mean, sir.’

‘It’s a very simple question, Adrian. It really is. I’m asking you about your relationship with Paul Trotter.’

‘Well, I haven’t really … really got one, sir. I mean, we’re sort of friends. He hangs around with me and Thompson sometimes. But I don’t know him very well.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘Well yes, sir.’

‘It is terribly important that you tell me the truth. Terribly important.’

A boy can always tell when a master is lying, Adrian thought to himself. And Tickford isn’t lying. It
is
very important.

‘Well, there is one thing, sir.’

‘Yes?’

‘I really don’t know that I should repeat this to you, sir. I mean Trotter did tell me something in confidence …’

Tickford leant forward and took Adrian’s hand by the wrist.